Joy

Where do you find your joy? Oh, I know- ideally, on a really good day, in a moment of Full Awareness and Spiritual Insight we can find and appreciate joy in every moment. But, I’m thinking here of the joy that can be found in a hope-I-can-get-the-kids-to-bed-before-I-collapse kind of human day. Because I am pretty sure that besides deep restorative sleep (which is so necessary) the other thing we need in order to meet the challenges of daily life and the news that oil geysers are blackening the ocean waters and the economy is wobbling unpredictably is joy.

Lately, I’m beginning to see that joy is predicated on a radical level of self-knowledge and self-acceptance. It’s about giving up the struggle to be better or different than you are, about seeing what you have to work with (mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually etc.) and, accepting this, finding what feeds your heart so you can offer the best of what you are to the world. The “Green Bough” in the title of this blog is from the Chinese proverb: If I keep a green bough in my heart the singing bird will come. The singing bird is joy that gives us hope, cultivates faith and offers us renewed energy. The green bough is the holding of who and what we are (not what we think we should be or could be some day) in our hearts without reservation, with humour and deep self-acceptance.

I find joy in lots of places and activities but never more consistently than during my early morning hours. While the city is still quiet I rise and make a cup of tea and return to bed to write my dreams, do my prayers and read something that stirs my imagination (at the moment it is Jungian analyst James Hollis’ Swamplands of the Soul : New Life in Dismal Places, and Azar Nafisi’s Things I’ve Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter.) I read and take notes. I am moved to write and reflect and contemplate. And I delight in the learning, the exploration, the words on the page of the book I am reading or the journal I am writing. And almost every morning, at some point, I pause and feel the thrill of not wanting to be anywhere else, doing anything else, being anyone else. I let the moment sink in- the delight and the privilege of being who and where I am. And I whisper to the dawning light with an overflowing heart, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

I know- not everyone’s idea of a good time and an image of me in bed reading and writing wouldn’t make a very effective good-time commercial. But that’s the thing about joy- because it’s predicated on self-acceptance it happens in the places where we are most ourselves and that’s different for each individual.

Joy is the giggle of delight that releases the tension we did not even know we were holding in our necks and shoulders and big toes. Joy is what we feel when a moment of prayer, a cup of tea or well written phrase returns us to a sense of connection to our inner selves when we weren’t aware that we had wandered away from our own centre. It’s the exhale of arriving at an inner home we thought we could never forget. It is sometimes bittersweet as we realize how long we have been driving on autopilot, disconnected, not really taking in the world or our day or our own soft animal body and human heart.

Sometimes we forget that joy is the point: the deep pleasure in all aspects of being that comes when we know we are exactly where we need, want and desire to be; when we need, want and desire to be exactly where we are and find ourselves spontaneously saying, “This is good. Thank you.”

Lately, as I read letters and do counselling sessions I listen carefully, asking myself, “Where does this person find joy?” Sometimes if the person is wandering in the deep woodlands of confusion or grief or weariness I have to watch carefully for the small white stones dropped by the soul on the dark forest floor as markers pointing to their particular path of joy. Because although we humans can live through long periods of hardship and illness, of uncertainty and suffering, we cannot live fully without joy.